Canada held an election in October that saw the son of our most famous Prime Minister follow in his father's footsteps. After almost a decade of rule by a secretive and regressive Conservative government that operated in the paranoid style of the Nixon administration, Justin Trudeau promised to bring back his father Pierre's open, transparent, and optimistic style of governance under the Liberal party. Upon being sworn into office, Justin (yes, we're on a first-name basis with the guy) launched his term with an open letter to Canadians laying out his vision. While I am a supporter of his style and some of his policies, there was one thing that irked me in his open letter. Since all my friends were spreading it on Facebook, I wanted to share with them (and anyone else who cares to read) what my response would be to Justin's promises to the "middle class."
Dear Mr. Trudeau,
I read your open letter to Canadians. Being a child of the 1970s (only a few years older than you), your father’s government set a tone in this country that shaped my identity as a Canadian. I have always looked back on his leadership with fondness and pride. The one characteristic I admired about your father was his openness and willingness to talk to critics and hostile journalists to engage in constructive debate. Even at his most divisive – the War Measures Act, the National Energy Program – he transparently made a case for his actions, keeping political discourse honest and vibrant. This enriched us as Canadians.
I am optimistic that your election is progress over where the country was heading under previous leadership. However, I was not a Liberal supporter in this campaign because I feel that corporate globalization and the declining ethics in which capitalism is practiced has damaged the well-being of far too many people in the world, including us in Canada. Taxing the “one percent” is not enough – we must eliminate the mechanisms that allowed them to become the one percent in the first place. Deals like the Trans Pacific Partnership will only exacerbate inequality in the world and between Canadians. The TPP seems unstoppable, but your support for it (not to mention Bill C-51) made me say “no thanks” to the Liberal party this time out.
However, your leadership, your personal ethics, your support for so many of the values that make me proud to be Canadian. Even if I never see my priorities enacted in policy, I am certain that you will leave this country in far better shape than the condition you found it in.
But there is one thing about your open letter to Canadians that offends me – your focus on serving the middle class and “helping those who work hard to join it.” Why should that be offensive? You are perhaps trying to appeal to someone like me. I was once part of the middle class, having worked for the federal government, in broadcasting, and in publishing. But I have been pushed out of the middle class. I have made every struggle to re-join, but in doing so, I have realized that many have been shunted out of the middle class because of values or choices they made in earlier parts of their lives, and will never be welcomed back.
It would be easy for me blame the economy for the fact that I now earn about $15,000 less than I did eight years ago. Indeed, the new and unimproved state of world finances is a major part of many people’s hardships. But I also had opportunities to remain employed in the middle class. I voluntarily left my secure job in the federal government, and a few years later I voluntarily left the publishing industry. In both cases it was because my own values conflicted with the workplace culture. Like your father, I could not bite my tongue. When asked to waste taxpayer money on unnecessary items simply to expend with “end of fiscal year” surpluses, I refused. When asked to abandon my ethics in journalism, I eventually walked away. When asked to work for free for several months for the slim possibility of getting a desk job in a multinational company, I protested.
Those examples are over-simplifications of complex and nuanced situations, but this is my point – there are some people who cannot fit into the middle-class in the way they could in your father’s era. In the same way your father got away with giving impromptu interviews without handlers or a communications team filtering his words, employees could once survive in middle-class jobs while being genuine human beings. Today, there is a game that must be played, and the rules have become so stifling and vague that there is a new class of people – those who are critical thinkers, those who might be creative problem solvers, those who have a wealth of experience, or who might be self-educated – who are denied access to middle-class jobs unless they censor the very aspects of their personalities that define them.
What offends me about the way you cater to the middle class is that there is no way to have a middle class without there being a lower class, such as the working class. You do not acknowledge the working class or the impoverished class, who will never, ever have the privilege of being middle class.
I now work in a warehouse. In my late 40s, I find myself having gone from middle-class Liberal supporter to being working class, but not sure about my political identity. The people I work with in the warehouse demonstrate the same (or greater) intelligence than those I worked with in middle-class offices. They are politically engaged, socially aware, emotionally intelligent, and have mature interpersonal skills. They are dedicated to their families, but in order to support their families, they must work excessive overtime and never get a long weekend, which denies them that precious time with their families. But they will never make it to the middle class because they’re not comfortable “disguising” themselves in suits and ties, they don’t care about keeping up appearances on social media, and they won’t bite their tongues when they see something wrong or unethical going on. Many of them don’t have university degrees (which are now required for many entry-level clerical jobs), not because they don’t’ have brains, but because of family or financial circumstances when they were younger. And yet they demonstrate all the personal qualities, and then some, that university is expected to instill in people.
I am now living with two other people in a two-bedroom apartment, a circumstance far unlike the independence I had a few years ago. One of my housemates is a socialist who loathes the Liberals and occasionally takes swipes at you. I always rise to your defence. He has made many references to a “class warfare” that both the Liberals and Conservatives have conspired in together against the working class. I found such statements to be histrionic and embellished.
However, all those references you made during your campaign about the middle class, and then again in your open letter to Canadians, really started to make me feel that yes, there is a type of class warfare happening today in our society, and I can’t help but reluctantly see you as engaging in it. You can grow the middle class if you want, but there will always remain classes of people who will be left behind by your plans. Homeless people will never be able to work in offices. Nurses will not suddenly be able to go to medical school and become doctors. Warehouse workers will not suddenly become accountants or middle-managers. Cab drivers won’t become airline pilots. ESL teachers will not become university professors. These are people performing jobs that keep our communities together, jobs that cannot disappear overnight because suddenly all the people doing them have joined the burgeoning middle class.
You talk very eloquently and optimistically about equality for all Canadians. That makes me proud and hopeful. If there is one thing that would truly make me feel optimistic about your leadership, it is this – stop talking so much about the middle class and acknowledge the classes below. Obviously, not everyone in the lower classes can prosper to the level of the middle class. But please help ensure the working class – and those who are even less well off than the working class, such as the impoverished and homeless – that they will be taken care of. That those who must work 12-hour shifts or on holidays that they won’t have to work so hard to pay the mortgage, and that they can spend Thanksgiving with their families instead of working. That those who don’t have homes will be guaranteed food and shelter.
To working-class people like us, the middle class is a privileged class that we feel exiled from. When you cater to them, you ignore us. What would help us prosper the most is to live in a country where we can be creative, open minded, respectfully critical, and politically engaged – like your father – without being shut out of the middle class. And for those of us who remain working class, that we will not be stigmatized or ghettoized for working in occupations that provide our communities with essential services.
Dear Mr. Trudeau,
I read your open letter to Canadians. Being a child of the 1970s (only a few years older than you), your father’s government set a tone in this country that shaped my identity as a Canadian. I have always looked back on his leadership with fondness and pride. The one characteristic I admired about your father was his openness and willingness to talk to critics and hostile journalists to engage in constructive debate. Even at his most divisive – the War Measures Act, the National Energy Program – he transparently made a case for his actions, keeping political discourse honest and vibrant. This enriched us as Canadians.
I am optimistic that your election is progress over where the country was heading under previous leadership. However, I was not a Liberal supporter in this campaign because I feel that corporate globalization and the declining ethics in which capitalism is practiced has damaged the well-being of far too many people in the world, including us in Canada. Taxing the “one percent” is not enough – we must eliminate the mechanisms that allowed them to become the one percent in the first place. Deals like the Trans Pacific Partnership will only exacerbate inequality in the world and between Canadians. The TPP seems unstoppable, but your support for it (not to mention Bill C-51) made me say “no thanks” to the Liberal party this time out.
However, your leadership, your personal ethics, your support for so many of the values that make me proud to be Canadian. Even if I never see my priorities enacted in policy, I am certain that you will leave this country in far better shape than the condition you found it in.
But there is one thing about your open letter to Canadians that offends me – your focus on serving the middle class and “helping those who work hard to join it.” Why should that be offensive? You are perhaps trying to appeal to someone like me. I was once part of the middle class, having worked for the federal government, in broadcasting, and in publishing. But I have been pushed out of the middle class. I have made every struggle to re-join, but in doing so, I have realized that many have been shunted out of the middle class because of values or choices they made in earlier parts of their lives, and will never be welcomed back.
It would be easy for me blame the economy for the fact that I now earn about $15,000 less than I did eight years ago. Indeed, the new and unimproved state of world finances is a major part of many people’s hardships. But I also had opportunities to remain employed in the middle class. I voluntarily left my secure job in the federal government, and a few years later I voluntarily left the publishing industry. In both cases it was because my own values conflicted with the workplace culture. Like your father, I could not bite my tongue. When asked to waste taxpayer money on unnecessary items simply to expend with “end of fiscal year” surpluses, I refused. When asked to abandon my ethics in journalism, I eventually walked away. When asked to work for free for several months for the slim possibility of getting a desk job in a multinational company, I protested.
Those examples are over-simplifications of complex and nuanced situations, but this is my point – there are some people who cannot fit into the middle-class in the way they could in your father’s era. In the same way your father got away with giving impromptu interviews without handlers or a communications team filtering his words, employees could once survive in middle-class jobs while being genuine human beings. Today, there is a game that must be played, and the rules have become so stifling and vague that there is a new class of people – those who are critical thinkers, those who might be creative problem solvers, those who have a wealth of experience, or who might be self-educated – who are denied access to middle-class jobs unless they censor the very aspects of their personalities that define them.
What offends me about the way you cater to the middle class is that there is no way to have a middle class without there being a lower class, such as the working class. You do not acknowledge the working class or the impoverished class, who will never, ever have the privilege of being middle class.
I now work in a warehouse. In my late 40s, I find myself having gone from middle-class Liberal supporter to being working class, but not sure about my political identity. The people I work with in the warehouse demonstrate the same (or greater) intelligence than those I worked with in middle-class offices. They are politically engaged, socially aware, emotionally intelligent, and have mature interpersonal skills. They are dedicated to their families, but in order to support their families, they must work excessive overtime and never get a long weekend, which denies them that precious time with their families. But they will never make it to the middle class because they’re not comfortable “disguising” themselves in suits and ties, they don’t care about keeping up appearances on social media, and they won’t bite their tongues when they see something wrong or unethical going on. Many of them don’t have university degrees (which are now required for many entry-level clerical jobs), not because they don’t’ have brains, but because of family or financial circumstances when they were younger. And yet they demonstrate all the personal qualities, and then some, that university is expected to instill in people.
I am now living with two other people in a two-bedroom apartment, a circumstance far unlike the independence I had a few years ago. One of my housemates is a socialist who loathes the Liberals and occasionally takes swipes at you. I always rise to your defence. He has made many references to a “class warfare” that both the Liberals and Conservatives have conspired in together against the working class. I found such statements to be histrionic and embellished.
However, all those references you made during your campaign about the middle class, and then again in your open letter to Canadians, really started to make me feel that yes, there is a type of class warfare happening today in our society, and I can’t help but reluctantly see you as engaging in it. You can grow the middle class if you want, but there will always remain classes of people who will be left behind by your plans. Homeless people will never be able to work in offices. Nurses will not suddenly be able to go to medical school and become doctors. Warehouse workers will not suddenly become accountants or middle-managers. Cab drivers won’t become airline pilots. ESL teachers will not become university professors. These are people performing jobs that keep our communities together, jobs that cannot disappear overnight because suddenly all the people doing them have joined the burgeoning middle class.
You talk very eloquently and optimistically about equality for all Canadians. That makes me proud and hopeful. If there is one thing that would truly make me feel optimistic about your leadership, it is this – stop talking so much about the middle class and acknowledge the classes below. Obviously, not everyone in the lower classes can prosper to the level of the middle class. But please help ensure the working class – and those who are even less well off than the working class, such as the impoverished and homeless – that they will be taken care of. That those who must work 12-hour shifts or on holidays that they won’t have to work so hard to pay the mortgage, and that they can spend Thanksgiving with their families instead of working. That those who don’t have homes will be guaranteed food and shelter.
To working-class people like us, the middle class is a privileged class that we feel exiled from. When you cater to them, you ignore us. What would help us prosper the most is to live in a country where we can be creative, open minded, respectfully critical, and politically engaged – like your father – without being shut out of the middle class. And for those of us who remain working class, that we will not be stigmatized or ghettoized for working in occupations that provide our communities with essential services.
